Kinetic Application: Epoxy Resin
The Curing Kinetics of an Epoxy-Based Adhesive
Epoxy-based adhesives are a group of organic materials widely used in the industry.
Problems
Problems:
- What is the minimum temperature needed for a specified cure over a given duration of time?
- What is the degree of curing for a given temperature program?
Solution
The process contains reaction steps of differing directions:
- endothermal melting at 60°C and
- exothermal curing at 120°C-200°C.
For a process with elementary steps of differing directions, the model-free analysis does not work.
The kinetic modelfound by the model-based method, is in the good agreement with experimental data, and this model is used for solving the problems.
Figure 2 depicts the curing behavior for many isothermal conditions. For example, a 95% curing level is achieved at 150°C after 16.4 min, at 170°C after 9.2 min and at 200°C after 4.2 min.
Figure 3 depicts the degree of curing for a user-defined temperature profile.